Ask Gina

 I really enjoyed Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh. It’s the factual story about how a maths theorem was eventually proved, which sounds amazingly boring but is actually fascinating.

What it taught me was that maths isn’t terrifying, unlike what I’d learned at school. (I was often in tears over maths homework.)

If you prefer novels, my book club recently read Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. It’s the story of a woman fossil collector in the early nineteenth century and is loosely based on fact.

We all enjoyed the story because of the main characters but you can also learn a fair bit about fossil collecting and how people responded to the challenge of incorporating these new discoveries into their existing worldviews.

Just one more and again it’s fiction. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer is a story told in letters and journal entries about an English writer who is contacted by someone in Guernsey (Channel Islands) after the war, and how she gradually becomes involved in that community.

It’s funny and touching and had me laughing aloud and in tears and I loved it - as did the rest of the book club. It certainly opened my eyes to what the Channel Islands went through in World War II. I had no idea.

If you only read one of the three, I recommend the last one. Happy reading!